The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion - Donald Wiebe
The Age of Discovery and the Protestant Reformation
The Western Epistemic Tradition and the Scientific Study of Religion - Donald Wiebe
Donald Wiebe [+]
University of Toronto
Donald Wiebe is Professor of Philosophy of Religion in Trinity College at the University of Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Religion and Truth: Towards and Alternative Paradigm for the Study of Religion (De Gruyter, 1981), The Irony of Theology and the Nature of Religious Thought (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), Beyond Legitimation: Essays on the Problem of Religious Knowledge (Palgrave Macmillan, 1994), The Politics of Religious Studies: The Continuing Conflict with Theology in the Academy (Palgrave Macmillan, 1999) and The Learned Practice of Religion in the Modern University (Bloomsbury, 2019).
Description
The discovery of the new world confronted European intellectuals with new religious traditions of unknown peoples. This created a range of epistemological problems that altered the very tenor of European life and shook European confidence in the universality of Christianity. The publication of the seven volumes of Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the World by Bernard Picard and Jean-Frédéric Bernard early in the eighteenth century encouraged a sympathetic openness to new religious traditions that made possible a comparative study of religions.